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Posts Tagged ‘Energy’

A Freakonomics Quorum: How Will the Recession Affect Clean Technology?

Way back when in 2006, here’s what venture-capital legend John Doerr had to say about clean technology: “This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” As recently as early 2008, plenty of investors and technology companies were still predicting a clean-tech boom. But now? With a recession that has scrambled nearly everyone’s spending and . . .



Creating the Car of the Future: A Q&A With the Author of Zoom

It’s tough to imagine a world without cars. They serve as a base for our social and economic structure in a way that wasn’t thought possible a century ago. But the rapid growth of an automobile-based culture has produced economic and environmental consequences that, if left unchecked, could cripple society. As such, we’re facing a major dilemma: we can’t tell . . .



Do Not Read This If You Are Anti-Nuclear Energy

There’s been a good bit of back-and-forthing on this blog about nuclear power, most notably regarding a Times Magazine column we wrote recently about the past and future of the nuclear industry. In a nutshell, we posited that the U.S. anti-nuke revolt in the 1960s and 1970s may look misguided in retrospect since it helped thwart the proliferation of nuclear . . .



What Do Brazil and Washington State Have in Common?

The answer isn’t that surprising in retrospect, but I’d never thought about it until I visited Seattle the other day and saw some statistics assembled by the Washington Policy Center. Here are some hints: 1. It has something to do with a post I wrote about Brazil not long ago. 2. It has something to do with water. 3. It . . .



Trying to Keep Warm

The boiler went out in my house last week. We have an archaic steam-driven radiator system, and we knew we were living on borrowed time. It is a good time of year to lose heat. It hasn’t been terribly cold in Chicago, so we’ve managed to keep the temperature in the house around 60 degrees through space heaters and sunlight . . .



The FREAK-est Links

Do restaurants blacklist black customers? (Earlier) Higher emissions standards could give car inspectors more incentives to cheat. New Broadway play puts game theory into action. (Earlier)



FREAK-TV: Jane Fonda, the Ellsberg Paradox, and Nuclear Power

Video We’ve got a new column in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about the past, present, and future of nuclear energy. The column is called “The Jane Fonda Effect” — any guesses why? — and the research took me down to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa. (That’s why my family and I got to spend . . .



What Should We Really Be Doing About Global Warming? A Freakonomics Quorum

We have blogged occasionally about different pieces of the global-warming puzzle (see here, here, and here), and we touched on the subject briefly in a New York Times Magazine column. It is an extraordinarily interesting issue, to say nothing of its importance and complexity, in part because there are so many foundational economic principles at play: not just supply and . . .




“Peak Oil”:Welcome to the Media’s New Version of Shark Attacks

The cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazine written by Peter Maass is about “Peak Oil.” The idea behind “peak oil” is that the world has been on a path of increasing oil production for many years, and now we are about to peak and go into a situation where there are dwindling reserves, leading to triple-digit prices . . .